192 DESCRIPTION OF ASTER; DIVARICATI 
Bracts broad, heavy and coriaceous, nearly uniform, rounding 
to a truncate or acutish ciliate apex, smooth-backed, and little 
ciliate elsewhere. Green tips short, abrupt, broad and blunt, soon 
disappearing inward with a brief change into a few longer spatu- 
late paler tips. Bracts otherwise pale, of a slightly brownish 
tinued well up the series; but often none such are developed at 
all. Inmost bracts inconspicuous, narrowed, pale and taper- 
obtuse, with some scarious and purple edges. 
Rays white, sometimes crimson, chiefly 10, 11 or 12, rather 
broad, rounded at the minutely bidentate apex, very thin and 
quickly withering. Fimbriation sometimes occurs, some rays 
becoming deeply bifid while yet erect and involutely terete. The 
whole plant presents sometimes a similarly bifid aspect, as if cleft 
almost to the ground into two long parallel ascending stems. 
Disks maroon or dull crimson, the sharp lobes about equal to the 
narrow bell, and about 1% the length of the short thickish stalk. 
Achenes smooth. 
— Scattered plants, or in little clumps, in half or three-fourths 
shade, in rich soil near rocks. Albany and the Hudson valley to 
the Potomac. 
Well-developed plants are highly unlike other Divaricati, 
sometimes almost without a cordate leaf, and usually with few or 
none at flowering. They are also readily distinguished by their 
ovate-oblong leaf-form from their congeners A. carmesinus and 
A. listriformis, both of which are also of thinner texture. 
A. aucuparius seems nearest of kin to the shuttle-form of A. 
Iistriformis, and sometimes develops a single truncate-based non- 
tapered leaf of the sad-iron type, among those of its own. 
Examples : 
N. sy , Albany, in Hughson's Glen near Ludlowville, Se. 
N. Y. vic., Æt. Washington, foot of 1 70th St., Oc. P 98. cis swamp- 
border, Se. i '98. Bryn Mawr — Se. 26, 96; - 3,796; under chestnut 
tree opposite first house, Se. 18, '97, Se. 14, 1903. 
N. J., Palisades, Undercliff ; at 2v a dob most extremely developed 
plants, Se. 29,'97, etc.; with well-grown age 18 in. high. July 9, 1900, but trampled 
out in Aug. by builders; one surviving, Se. dci was chiefly in bud. No further 
traces till Oc. 1904, when several plants sus 
a.,near inris as “ A. cordi Side: — - Phila. ," in hb. Bernhardi, now * 
in hb. Ms Bot. 
prose R., on Conn I., above Great Falls, Oc. 11, ’go. 
2 xd Truncate-base form ; verging toward A. virgularis. Leaf- 
